BOOK II

1. THAT SOVEREIGNTY IS INALIENABLE

THE first and most
important deduction from the principles we have so far laid down is that
the general will alone can direct the State according to the object for
which it was instituted, i.e., the common good: for if the clashing of
particular interests made the establishment of societies necessary, the
agreement of these very interests made it possible. The common element in
these different interests is what forms the social tie; and, were there no
point of agreement between them all, no society could exist. It is solely
on the basis of this common interest that every society should be
governed.

I hold then that Sovereignty, being nothing less than the exercise of
the general will, can never be alienated, and that the Sovereign, who is
no less than a collective being, cannot be represented except by himself:
the power indeed may be transmitted, but not the will.

In reality, if it is not impossible for a particular will to agree on
some point with the general will, it is at least impossible for the
agreement to be lasting and constant; for the particular will tends, by
its very nature, to partiality, while the general will tends to equality.
It is even more impossible to have any guarantee of this agreement; for
even if it should always exist, it would be the effect not of art, but of
chance. The Sovereign may indeed say: "I now will actually what this
man wills, or at least what he says he wills"; but it cannot say: "What
he wills tomorrow, I too shall will" because it is absurd for the
will to bind itself for the future, nor is it incumbent on any will to
consent to anything that is not for the good of the being who wills. If
then the people promises simply to obey, by that very act it dissolves
itself and loses what makes it a people; the moment a master exists, there
is no longer a Sovereign, and from that moment the body politic has ceased
to exist.

This does not mean that the commands of the rulers cannot pass for
general wills, so long as the Sovereign, being free to oppose them, offers
no opposition. In such a case, universal silence is taken to imply the
consent of the people. This will be explained later on.

2. THAT SOVEREIGNTY IS INDIVISIBLE

SOVEREIGNTY, for the
same reason as makes it inalienable, is indivisible; for will either is,
or is not, general;6 it is the will
either of the body of the people, or only of a part of it. In the first
case, the will, when declared, is an act of Sovereignty and constitutes
law: in the second, it is merely a particular will, or act of magistracy —
at the most a decree.

But our political theorists, unable to divide Sovereignty in principle,
divide it according to its object: into force and will; into legislative
power and executive power; into rights of taxation, justice and war; into
internal administration and power of foreign treaty. Sometimes they
confuse all these sections, and sometimes they distinguish them; they turn
the Sovereign into a fantastic being composed of several connected pieces:
it is as if they were making man of several bodies, one with eyes, one
with arms, another with feet, and each with nothing besides. We are told
that the jugglers of Japan dismember a child before the eyes of the
spectators; then they throw all the members into the air one after
another, and the child falls down alive and whole. The conjuring tricks of
our political theorists are very like that; they first dismember the Body
politic by an illusion worthy of a fair, and then join it together again
we know not how.

This error is due to a lack of exact notions concerning the Sovereign
authority, and to taking for parts of it what are only emanations from it.
Thus, for example, the acts of declaring war and making peace have been
regarded as acts of Sovereignty; but this is not the case, as these acts
do not constitute law, but merely the application of a law, a particular
act which decides how the law applies, as we shall see clearly when the
idea attached to the word law has been defined.

If we examined the other divisions in the same manner, we should find
that, whenever Sovereignty seems to be divided, there is an illusion: the
rights which are taken as being part of Sovereignty are really all
subordinate, and always imply supreme wills of which they only sanction
the execution.

It would be impossible to estimate the obscurity this lack of exactness
has thrown over the decisions of writers who have dealt with political
right, when they have used the principles laid down by them to pass
judgment on the respective rights of kings and peoples. Every one can see,
in Chapters III and IV of the First Book of Grotius, how the learned man
and his translator, Barbeyrac, entangle and tie themselves up in their own
sophistries, for fear of saying too little or too much of what they think,
and so offending the interests they have to conciliate. Grotius, a refugee
in France, ill-content with his own country, and desirous of paying his
court to Louis XIII, to whom his book is dedicated, spares no pains to rob
the peoples of all their rights and invest kings with them by every
conceivable artifice. This would also have been much to the taste of
Barbeyrac, who dedicated his translation to George I of England. But
unfortunately the expulsion of James II, which he called his "abdication,"
compelled him to use all reserve, to shuffle and to tergiversate, in order
to avoid making William out a usurper. If these two writers had adopted
the true principles, all difficulties would have been removed, and they
would have been always consistent; but it would have been a sad truth for
them to tell, and would have paid court for them to no one save the
people. Moreover, truth is no road to fortune, and the people dispenses
neither ambassadorships, nor professorships, nor pensions.

3. WHETHER THE GENERAL WILL IS FALLIBLE

IT follows from what has
gone before that the general will is always right and tends to the public
advantage; but it does not follow that the deliberations of the people are
always equally correct. Our will is always for our own good, but we do not
always see what that is; the people is never corrupted, but it is often
deceived, and on such occasions only does it seem to will what is bad.

There is often a great deal of difference between the will of all and
the general will; the latter considers only the common interest, while the
former takes private interest into account, and is no more than a sum of
particular wills: but take away from these same wills the pluses and
minuses that cancel one another,7
and the general will remains as the sum of the differences.

If, when the people, being furnished with adequate information, held its
deliberations, the citizens had no communication one with another, the
grand total of the small differences would always give the general will,
and the decision would always be good. But when factions arise, and
partial associations are formed at the expense of the great association,
the will of each of these associations becomes general in relation to its
members, while it remains particular in relation to the State: it may then
be said that there are no longer as many votes as there are men, but only
as many as there are associations. The differences become less numerous
and give a less general result. Lastly, when one of these associations is
so great as to prevail over all the rest, the result is no longer a sum of
small differences, but a single difference; in this case there is no
longer a general will, and the opinion which prevails is purely
particular.

It is therefore essential, if the general will is to be able to express
itself, that there should be no partial society within the State, and that
each citizen should think only his own thoughts:8
which was indeed the sublime and unique system established by the great
Lycurgus. But if there are partial societies, it is best to have as many
as possible and to prevent them from being unequal, as was done by Solon,
Numa and Servius. These precautions are the only ones that can guarantee
that the general will shall be always enlightened, and that the people
shall in no way deceive itself.

4. THE LIMITS OF THE SOVEREIGN POWER

IF the State is a moral
person whose life is in the union of its members, and if the most
important of its cares is the care for its own preservation, it must have
a universal and compelling force, in order to move and dispose each part
as may be most advantageous to the whole. As nature gives each man
absolute power over all his members, the social compact gives the body
politic absolute power over all its members also; and it is this power
which, under the direction of the general will, bears, as I have said, the
name of Sovereignty.

But, besides the public person, we have to consider the private persons
composing it, whose life and liberty are naturally independent of it. We
are bound then to distinguish clearly between the respective rights of the
citizens and the Sovereign,9 and
between the duties the former have to fulfil as subjects, and the natural
rights they should enjoy as men.

Each man alienates, I admit, by the social compact, only such part of
his powers, goods and liberty as it is important for the community to
control; but it must also be granted that the Sovereign is sole judge of
what is important.

Every service a citizen can render the State he ought to render as soon
as the Sovereign demands it; but the Sovereign, for its part, cannot
impose upon its subjects any fetters that are useless to the community,
nor can it even wish to do so; for no more by the law of reason than by
the law of nature can anything occur without a cause.

The undertakings which bind us to the social body are obligatory only
because they are mutual; and their nature is such that in fulfilling them
we cannot work for others without working for ourselves. Why is it that
the general will is always in the right, and that all continually will the
happiness of each one, unless it is because there is not a man who does
not think of "each" as meaning him, and consider himself in
voting for all? This proves that equality of rights and the idea of
justice which such equality creates originate in the preference each man
gives to himself, and accordingly in the very nature of man. It proves
that the general will, to be really such, must be general in its object as
well as its essence; that it must both come from all and apply to all; and
that it loses its natural rectitude when it is directed to some particular
and determinate object, because in such a case we are judging of something
foreign to us, and have no true principle of equity to guide us.

Indeed, as soon as a question of particular fact or right arises on a
point not previously regulated by a general convention, the matter becomes
contentious. It is a case in which the individuals concerned are one
party, and the public the other, but in which I can see neither the law
that ought to be followed nor the judge who ought to give the decision. In
such a case, it would be absurd to propose to refer the question to an
express decision of the general will, which can be only the conclusion
reached by one of the parties and in consequence will be, for the other
party, merely an external and particular will, inclined on this occasion
to injustice and subject to error. Thus, just as a particular will cannot
stand for the general will, the general will, in turn, changes its nature,
when its object is particular, and, as general, cannot pronounce on a man
or a fact. When, for instance, the people of Athens nominated or displaced
its rulers, decreed honours to one, and imposed penalties on another, and,
by a multitude of particular decrees, exercised all the functions of
government indiscriminately, it had in such cases no longer a general will
in the strict sense; it was acting no longer as Sovereign, but as
magistrate. This will seem contrary to current views; but I must be given
time to expound my own.

It should be seen from the foregoing that what makes the will general is
less the number of voters than the common interest uniting them; for,
under this system, each necessarily submits to the conditions he imposes
on others: and this admirable agreement between interest and justice gives
to the common deliberations an equitable character which at once vanishes
when any particular question is discussed, in the absence of a common
interest to unite and identify the ruling of the judge with that of the
party.

From whatever side we approach our principle, we reach the same
conclusion, that the social compact sets up among the citizens an equality
of such a kind, that they all bind themselves to observe the same
conditions and should therefore all enjoy the same rights. Thus, from the
very nature of the compact, every act of Sovereignty, i.e., every
authentic act of the general will, binds or favours all the citizens
equally; so that the Sovereign recognises only the body of the nation, and
draws no distinctions between those of whom it is made up. What, then,
strictly speaking, is an act of Sovereignty? It is not a convention
between a superior and an inferior, but a convention between the body and
each of its members. It is legitimate, because based on the social
contract, and equitable, because common to all; useful, because it can
have no other object than the general good, and stable, because guaranteed
by the public force and the supreme power. So long as the subjects have to
submit only to conventions of this sort, they obey no-one but their own
will; and to ask how far the respective rights of the Sovereign and the
citizens extend, is to ask up to what point the latter can enter into
undertakings with themselves, each with all, and all with each.

We can see from this that the sovereign power, absolute, sacred and
inviolable as it is, does not and cannot exceed the limits of general
conventions, and that every man may dispose at will of such goods and
liberty as these conventions leave him; so that the Sovereign never has a
right to lay more charges on one subject than on another, because, in that
case, the question becomes particular, and ceases to be within its
competency.

When these distinctions have once been admitted, it is seen to be so
untrue that there is, in the social contract, any real renunciation on the
part of the individuals, that the position in which they find themselves
as a result of the contract is really preferable to that in which they
were before. Instead of a renunciation, they have made an advantageous
exchange: instead of an uncertain and precarious way of living they have
got one that is better and more secure; instead of natural independence
they have got liberty, instead of the power to harm others security for
themselves, and instead of their strength, which others might overcome, a
right which social union makes invincible. Their very life, which they
have devoted to the State, is by it constantly protected; and when they
risk it in the State's defence, what more are they doing than giving back
what they have received from it? What are they doing that they would not
do more often and with greater danger in the state of nature, in which
they would inevitably have to fight battles at the peril of their lives in
defence of that which is the means of their preservation? All have indeed
to fight when their country needs them; but then no one has ever to fight
for himself. Do we not gain something by running, on behalf of what gives
us our security, only some of the risks we should have to run for
ourselves, as soon as we lost it?

5. THE RIGHT OF LIFE AND DEATH

THE question is often
asked how individuals, having no right to dispose of their own lives, can
transfer to the Sovereign a right which they do not possess. The
difficulty of answering this question seems to me to lie in its being
wrongly stated. Every man has a right to risk his own life in order to
preserve it. Has it ever been said that a man who throws himself out of
the window to escape from a fire is guilty of suicide? Has such a crime
ever been laid to the charge of him who perishes in a storm because, when
he went on board, he knew of the danger?

The social treaty has for its end the preservation of the contracting
parties. He who wills the end wills the means also, and the means must
involve some risks, and even some losses. He who wishes to preserve his
life at others' expense should also, when it is necessary, be ready to
give it up for their sake. Furthermore, the citizen is no longer the judge
of the dangers to which the law-desires him to expose himself; and when
the prince says to him: "It is expedient for the State that you
should die," he ought to die, because it is only on that condition
that he has been living in security up to the present, and because his
life is no longer a mere bounty of nature, but a gift made conditionally
by the State.

The death-penalty inflicted upon criminals may be looked on in much the
same light: it is in order that we may not fall victims to an assassin
that we consent to die if we ourselves turn assassins. In this treaty, so
far from disposing of our own lives, we think only of securing them, and
it is not to be assumed that any of the parties then expects to get
hanged.

Again, every malefactor, by attacking social rights, becomes on forfeit
a rebel and a traitor to his country; by violating its laws be ceases to
be a member of it; he even makes war upon it. In such a case the
preservation of the State is inconsistent with his own, and one or the
other must perish; in putting the guilty to death, we slay not so much the
citizen as an enemy. The trial and the judgment are the proofs that he has
broken the social treaty, and is in consequence no longer a member of the
State. Since, then, he has recognised himself to be such by living there,
he must be removed by exile as a violator of the compact, or by death as a
public enemy; for such an enemy is not a moral person, but merely a man;
and in such a case the right of war is to kill the vanquished.

But, it will be said, the condemnation of a criminal is a particular
act. I admit it: but such condemnation is not a function of the Sovereign;
it is a right the Sovereign can confer without being able itself to exert
it. All my ideas are consistent, but I cannot expound them all at once.

We may add that frequent punishments are always a sign of weakness or
remissness on the part of the government. There is not a single ill-doer
who could not be turned to some good. The State has no right to put to
death, even for the sake of making an example, any one whom it can leave
alive without danger.

The right of pardoning or exempting the guilty from a penalty imposed by
the law and pronounced by the judge belongs only to the authority which is
superior to both judge and law, i.e., the Sovereign; each its right in
this matter is far from clear, and the cases for exercising it are
extremely rare. In a well-governed State, there are few punishments, not
because there are many pardons, but because criminals are rare; it is when
a State is in decay that the multitude of crimes is a guarantee of
impunity. Under the Roman Republic, neither the Senate nor the Consuls
ever attempted to pardon; even the people never did so, though it
sometimes revoked its own decision. Frequent pardons mean that crime will
soon need them no longer, and no one can help seeing whither that leads.
But I feel my heart protesting and restraining my pen; let us leave these
questions to the just man who has never offended, and would himself stand
in no need of pardon.

6. LAW

BY the social compact we
have given the body politic existence and life; we have now by legislation
to give it movement and will. For the original act by which the body is
formed and united still in no respect determines what it ought to do for
its preservation.

What is well and in conformity with order is so by the nature of things
and independently of human conventions. All justice comes from God, who is
its sole source; but if we knew how to receive so high an inspiration, we
should need neither government nor laws. Doubtless, there is a universal
justice emanating from reason alone; but this justice, to be admitted
among us, must be mutual. Humanly speaking, in default of natural
sanctions, the laws of justice are ineffective among men: they merely make
for the good of the wicked and the undoing of the just, when the just man
observes them towards everybody and nobody observes them towards him.
Conventions and laws are therefore needed to join rights to duties and
refer justice to its object. In the state of nature, where everything is
common, I owe nothing to him whom I have promised nothing; I recognise as
belonging to others only what is of no use to me. In the state of society
all rights are fixed by law, and the case becomes different.

But what, after all, is a law? As long as we remain satisfied with
attaching purely metaphysical ideas to the word, we shall go on arguing
without arriving at an understanding; and when we have defined a law of
nature, we shall be no nearer the definition of a law of the State.

I have already said that there can be no general will directed to a
particular object. Such an object must be either within or outside the
State. If outside, a will which is alien to it cannot be, in relation to
it, general; if within, it is part of the State, and in that case there
arises a relation between whole and part which makes them two separate
beings, of which the part is one, and the whole minus the part the other.
But the whole minus a part cannot be the whole; and while this relation
persists, there can be no whole, but only two unequal parts; and it
follows that the will of one is no longer in any respect general in
relation to the other.

But when the whole people decrees for the whole people, it is
considering only itself; and if a relation is then formed, it is between
two aspects of the entire object, without there being any division of the
whole. In that case the matter about which the decree is made is, like the
decreeing will, general. This act is what I call a law.

When I say that the object of laws is always general, I mean that law
considers subjects en masse and actions in the abstract, and never
a particular person or action. Thus the law may indeed decree that there
shall be privileges, but cannot confer them on anybody by name. It may set
up several classes of citizens, and even lay down the qualifications for
membership of these classes, but it cannot nominate such and such persons
as belonging to them; it may establish a monarchical government and
hereditary succession, but it cannot choose a king, or nominate a royal
family. In a word, no function which has a particular object belongs to
the legislative power.

On this view, we at once see that it can no longer be asked whose
business it is to make laws, since they are acts of the general will; nor
whether the prince is above the law, since he is a member of the State;
nor whether the law can be unjust, since no one is unjust to himself; nor
how we can be both free and subject to the laws, since they are but
registers of our wills.

We see further that, as the law unites universality of will with
universality of object, what a man, whoever he be, commands of his own
motion cannot be a law; and even what the Sovereign commands with regard
to a particular matter is no nearer being a law, but is a decree, an act,
not of sovereignty, but of magistracy.

I therefore give the name "Republic" to every State that is
governed by laws, no matter what the form of its administration may be:
for only in such a case does the public interest govern, and the res
publica rank as a reality. Every legitimate government is
republican;10 what government is I
will explain later on.

Laws are, properly speaking, only the conditions of civil association.
The people, being subject to the laws, ought to be their author: the
conditions of the society ought to be regulated solely by those who come
together to form it. But how are they to regulate them? Is it to be by
common agreement, by a sudden inspiration? Has the body politic an organ
to declare its will? Who can give it the foresight to formulate and
announce its acts in advance? Or how is it to announce them in the hour of
need? How can a blind multitude, which often does not know what it wills,
because it rarely knows what is good for it, carry out for itself so great
and difficult an enterprise as a system of legislation? Of itself the
people wills always the good, but of itself it by no means always sees it.
The general will is always in the right, but the judgment which guides it
is not always enlightened. It must be got to see objects as they are, and
sometimes as they ought to appear to it; it must be shown the good road it
is in search of, secured from the seductive influences of individual
wills, taught to see times and spaces as a series, and made to weigh the
attractions of present and sensible advantages against the danger of
distant and hidden evils. The individuals see the good they reject; the
public wills the good it does not see. All stand equally in need of
guidance. The former must be compelled to bring their wills into
conformity with their reason; the latter must be taught to know what it
wills. If that is done, public enlightenment leads to the union of
understanding and will in the social body: the parts are made to work
exactly together, and the whole is raised to its highest power. This makes
a legislator necessary.

7. THE LEGISLATOR

IN order to discover the
rules of society best suited to nations, a superior intelligence beholding
all the passions of men without experiencing any of them would be needed.
This intelligence would have to be wholly unrelated to our nature, while
knowing it through and through; its happiness would have to be independent
of us, and yet ready to occupy itself with ours; and lastly, it would
have, in the march of time, to look forward to a distant glory, and,
working in one century, to be able to enjoy in the next.11
It would take gods to give men laws.

What Caligula argued from the facts, Plato, in the dialogue called the
Politicus, argued in defining the civil or kingly man, on the
basis of right. But if great princes are rare, how much more so are great
legislators? The former have only to follow the pattern which the latter
have to lay down. The legislator is the engineer who invents the machine,
the prince merely the mechanic who sets it up and makes it go. "At
the birth of societies," says Montesquieu, "the rulers of
Republics establish institutions, and afterwards the institutions mould
the rulers."12

He who dares to undertake the making of a people's institutions ought to
feel himself capable, so to speak, of changing human nature, of
transforming each individual, who is by himself a complete and solitary
whole, into part of a greater whole from which he in a manner receives his
life and being; of altering man's constitution for the purpose of
strengthening it; and of substituting a partial and moral existence for
the physical and independent existence nature has conferred on us all. He
must, in a word, take away from man his own resources and give him instead
new ones alien to him, and incapable of being made use of without the help
of other men. The more completely these natural resources are annihilated,
the greater and the more lasting are those which he acquires, and the more
stable and perfect the new institutions; so that if each citizen is
nothing and can do nothing without the rest, and the resources acquired by
the whole are equal or superior to the aggregate of the resources of all
the individuals, it may be said that legislation is at the highest
possible point of perfection.

The legislator occupies in every respect an extraordinary position in
the State. If he should do so by reason of his genius, he does so no less
by reason of his office, which is neither magistracy, nor Sovereignty.
This office, which sets up the Republic, nowhere enters into its
constitution; it is an individual and superior function, which has nothing
in common with human empire; for if he who holds command over men ought
not to have command over the laws, he who has command over the laws ought
not any more to have it over men; or else his laws would be the ministers
of his passions and would often merely serve to perpetuate his injustices:
his private aims would inevitably mar the sanctity of his work.

When Lycurgus gave laws to his country, he began by resigning the
throne. It was the custom of most Greek towns to entrust the establishment
of their laws to foreigners. The Republics of modern Italy in many cases
followed this example; Geneva did the same and profited by it.13
Rome, when it was most prosperous, suffered a revival of all the crimes of
tyranny, and was brought to the verge of destruction, because it put the
legislative authority and the sovereign power into the same hands.

Nevertheless, the decemvirs themselves never claimed the right to pass
any law merely on their own authority. "Nothing we propose to you,"
they said to the people, "can pass into law without your consent.
Romans, be yourselves the authors of the laws which are to make you happy."

He, therefore, who draws up the laws has, or should have, no right of
legislation, and the people cannot, even if it wishes, deprive itself of
this incommunicable right, because, according to the fundamental compact,
only the general will can bind the individuals, and there can be no
assurance that a particular will is in conformity with the general will,
until it has been put to the free vote of the people. This I have said
already; but it is worth while to repeat it.

Thus in the task of legislation we find together two things which appear
to be incompatible: an enterprise too difficult for human powers, and, for
its execution, an authority that is no authority.

There is a further difficulty that deserves attention. Wise men, if they
try to speak their language to the common herd instead of its own, cannot
possibly make themselves understood. There are a thousand kinds of ideas
which it is impossible to translate into popular language. Conceptions
that are too general and objects that are too remote are equally out of
its range: each individual, having no taste for any other plan of
government than that which suits his particular interest, finds it
difficult to realise the advantages he might hope to draw from the
continual privations good laws impose. For a young people to be able to
relish sound principles of political theory and follow the fundamental
rules of statecraft, the effect would have to become the cause; the social
spirit, which should be created by these institutions, would have to
preside over their very foundation; and men would have to be before law
what they should become by means of law. The legislator therefore, being
unable to appeal to either force or reason, must have recourse to an
authority of a different order, capable of constraining without violence
and persuading without convincing.

This is what has, in all ages, compelled the fathers of nations to have
recourse to divine intervention and credit the gods with their own wisdom,
in order that the peoples, submitting to the laws of the State as to those
of nature, and recognising the same power in the formation of the city as
in that of man, might obey freely, and bear with docility the yoke of the
public happiness.

This sublime reason, far above the range of the common herd, is that
whose decisions the legislator puts into the mouth of the immortals, in
order to constrain by divine authority those whom human prudence could not
move.14 But it is not anybody who
can make the gods speak, or get himself believed when he proclaims himself
their interpreter. The great soul of the legislator is the only miracle
that can prove his mission. Any man may grave tablets of stone, or buy an
oracle, or feign secret intercourse with some divinity, or train a bird to
whisper in his ear, or find other vulgar ways of imposing on the people.
He whose knowledge goes no further may perhaps gather round him a band of
fools; but he will never found an empire, and his extravagances will
quickly perish with him. Idle tricks form a passing tie; only wisdom can
make it lasting. The Judaic law, which still subsists, and that of the
child of Ishmael, which, for ten centuries, has ruled half the world,
still proclaim the great men who laid them down; and, while the pride of
philosophy or the blind spirit of faction sees in them no more than lucky
impostures, the true political theorist admires, in the institutions they
set up, the great and powerful genius which presides over things made to
endure.

We should not, with Warburton, conclude from this that politics and
religion have among us a common object, but that, in the first periods of
nations, the one is used as an instrument for the other.

8. THE PEOPLE

AS, before putting up a
large building, the architect surveys and sounds the site to see if it
will bear the weight, the wise legislator does not begin by laying down
laws good in themselves, but by investigating the fitness of the people,
for which they are destined, to receive them. Plato refused to legislate
for the Arcadians and the Cyrenĉans, because he knew that both
peoples were rich and could not put up with equality; and good laws and
bad men were found together in Crete, because Minos had inflicted
discipline on a people already burdened with vice.

A thousand nations have achieved earthly greatness, that could never
have endured good laws; even such as could have endured them could have
done so only for a very brief period of their long history. Most peoples,
like most men, are docile only in youth; as they grow old they become
incorrigible. When once customs have become established and prejudices
inveterate, it is dangerous and useless to attempt their reformation; the
people, like the foolish and cowardly patients who rave at sight of the
doctor, can no longer bear that any one should lay hands on its faults to
remedy them.

There are indeed times in the history of States when, just as some kinds
of illness turn men's heads and make them forget the past, periods of
violence and revolutions do to peoples what these crises do to
individuals: horror of the past takes the place of forgetfulness, and the
State, set on fire by civil wars, is born again, so to speak, from its
ashes, and takes on anew, fresh from the jaws of death, the vigour of
youth. Such were Sparta at the time of Lycurgus, Rome after the Tarquins,
and, in modern times, Holland and Switzerland after the expulsion of the
tyrants.

But such events are rare; they are exceptions, the cause of which is
always to be found in the particular constitution of the State concerned.
They cannot even happen twice to the same people, for it can make itself
free as long as it remains barbarous, but not when the civic impulse has
lost its vigour. Then disturbances may destroy it, but revolutions cannot
mend it: it needs a master, and not a liberator. Free peoples, be mindful
of this maxim: "Liberty may be gained, but can never be recovered."

Youth is not infancy. There is for nations, as for men, a period of
youth, or, shall we say, maturity, before which they should not be made
subject to laws; but the maturity of a people is not always easily
recognisable, and, if it is anticipated, the work is spoilt. One people is
amenable to discipline from the beginning; another, not after ten
centuries. Russia will never be really civilised, because it was civilised
too soon. Peter had a genius for imitation; but he lacked true genius,
which is creative and makes all from nothing. He did some good things, but
most of what he did was out of place. He saw that his people was
barbarous, but did not see that it was not ripe for civilisation: he
wanted to civilise it when it needed only hardening. His first wish was to
make Germans or Englishmen, when he ought to have been making Russians;
and he prevented his subjects from ever becoming what they might have been
by persuading them that they were what they are not. In this fashion too a
French teacher turns out his pupil to be an infant prodigy, and for the
rest of his life to be nothing whatsoever. The empire of Russia will
aspire to conquer Europe, and will itself be conquered. The Tartars, its
subjects or neighbours, will become its masters and ours, by a revolution
which I regard as inevitable. Indeed, all the kings of Europe are working
in concert to hasten its coming.

9. THE PEOPLE (continued)

As nature has set bounds to the stature of a well-made man, and, outside
those limits, makes nothing but giants or dwarfs, similarly, for the
constitution of a State to be at its best, it is possible to fix limits
that will make it neither too large for good government, nor too small for
self-maintenance. In every body politic there is a maximum
strength which it cannot exceed and which it only loses by increasing in
size. Every extension of the social tie means its relaxation; and,
generally speaking, a small State is stronger in proportion than a great
one.

A thousand arguments could be advanced in favour of this principle.
First, long distances make administration more difficult, just as a weight
becomes heavier at the end of a longer lever. Administration therefore
becomes more and more burdensome as the distance grows greater; for, in
the first place, each city has its own, which is paid for by the people:
each district its own, still paid for by the people: then comes each
province, and then the great governments, satrapies, and vice-royalties,
always costing more the higher you go, and always at the expense of the
unfortunate people. Last of all comes the supreme administration, which
eclipses all the rest. All these over charges are a continual drain upon
the subjects; so far from being better governed by all these different
orders, they are worse governed than if there were only a single authority
over them. In the meantime, there scarce remain resources enough to meet
emergencies; and, when recourse must be had to these, the State is always
on the eve of destruction.

This is not all; not only has the government less vigour and promptitude
for securing the observance of the laws, preventing nuisances, correcting
abuses, and guarding against seditious undertakings begun in distant
places; the people has less affection for its rulers, whom it never sees,
for its country, which, to its eyes, seems like the world, and for its
fellow-citizens, most of whom are unknown to it. The same laws cannot suit
so many diverse provinces with different customs, situated in the most
various climates, and incapable of enduring a uniform government.
Different laws lead only to trouble and confusion among peoples which,
living under the same rulers and in constant communication one with
another, intermingle and intermarry, and, coming under the sway of new
customs, never know if they can call their very patrimony their own.
Talent is buried, virtue unknown and vice unpunished, among such a
multitude of men who do not know one another, gathered together in one
place at the seat of the central administration. The leaders, overwhelmed
with business, see nothing for themselves; the State is governed by
clerks. Finally, the measures which have to be taken to maintain the
general authority, which all these distant officials wish to escape or to
impose upon, absorb all the energy of the public, so that there is none
left for the happiness of the people. There is hardly enough to defend it
when need arises, and thus a body which is too big for its constitution
gives way and falls crushed under its own weight.

Again, the State must assure itself a safe foundation, if it is to have
stability, and to be able to resist the shocks it cannot help
experiencing, as well as the efforts it will be forced to make for its
maintenance; for all peoples have a kind of centrifugal force that makes
them continually act one against another, and tend to aggrandise
themselves at their neighbours' expense, like the vortices of Descartes.
Thus the weak run the risk of being soon swallowed up; and it is almost
impossible for any one to preserve itself except by putting itself in a
state of equilibrium with all, so that the pressure is on all sides
practically equal.

It may therefore be seen that there are reasons for expansion and
reasons for contraction; and it is no small part of the statesman's skill
to hit between them the mean that is most favourable to the preservation
of the State. It may be said that the reason for expansion, being merely
external and relative, ought to be subordinate to the reasons for
contraction, which are internal and absolute. A strong and healthy
constitution is the first thing to look for; and it is better to count on
the vigour which comes of good government than on the resources a great
territory furnishes.

It may be added that there have been known States so constituted that
the necessity of making conquests entered into their very constitution,
and that, in order to maintain themselves, they were forced to expand
ceaselessly. It may be that they congratulated themselves greatly on this
fortunate necessity, which none the less indicated to them, along with the
limits of their greatness, the inevitable moment of their fall.

10. THE PEOPLE (continued)

ABODY politic may be
measured in two ways — either by the extent of its territory, or by
the number of its people; and there is, between these two measurements, a
right relation which makes the State really great. The men make the State,
and the territory sustains the men; the right relation therefore is that
the land should suffice for the maintenance of the inhabitants, and that
there should be as many inhabitants as the land can maintain. In this
proportion lies the maximum strength of a given number of people;
for, if there is too much land, it is troublesome to guard and
inadequately cultivated, produces more than is needed, and soon gives rise
to wars of defence; if there is not enough, the State depends on its
neighbours for what it needs over and above, and this soon gives rise to
wars of offence. Every people, to which its situation gives no choice save
that between commerce and war, is weak in itself: it depends on its
neighbours, and on circumstances; its existence can never be more than
short and uncertain. It either conquers others, and changes its situation,
or it is conquered and becomes nothing. Only insignificance or greatness
can keep it free.

No fixed relation can be stated between the extent of territory and the
population that are adequate one to the other, both because of the
differences in the quality of land, in its fertility, in the nature of its
products, and in the influence of climate, and because of the different
tempers of those who inhabit it; for some in a fertile country consume
little, and others on an ungrateful soil much. The greater or less
fecundity of women, the conditions that are more or less favourable in
each country to the growth of population, and the influence the legislator
can hope to exercise by his institutions, must also be taken into account.
The legislator therefore should not go by what he sees, but by what he
foresees; he should stop not so much at the state in which he actually
finds the population, as at that to which it ought naturally to attain.
Lastly, there are countless cases in which the particular local
circumstances demand or allow the acquisition of a greater territory than
seems necessary. Thus, expansion will be great in a mountainous country,
where the natural products, i.e., woods and pastures, need less labour,
where we know from experience that women are more fertile than in the
plains, and where a great expanse of slope affords only a small level
tract that can be counted on for vegetation. On the other hand,
contraction is possible on the coast, even in lands of rocks and nearly
barren sands, because there fishing makes up to a great extent for the
lack of land-produce, because the inhabitants have to congregate together
more in order to repel pirates, and further because it is easier to
unburden the country of its superfluous inhabitants by means of colonies.

To these conditions of law-giving must be added one other which, though
it cannot take the place of the rest, renders them all useless when it is
absent. This is the enjoyment of peace and plenty; for the moment at which
a State sets its house in order is, like the moment when a battalion is
forming up, that when its body is least capable of offering resistance and
easiest to destroy. A better resistance could be made at a time of
absolute disorganisation than at a moment of fermentation, when each is
occupied with his own position and not with the danger. If war, famine, or
sedition arises at this time of crisis, the State will inevitably be
overthrown.

Not that many governments have not been set up during such storms; but
in such cases these governments are themselves the State's destroyers.
Usurpers always bring about or select troublous times to get passed, under
cover of the public terror, destructive laws, which the people would never
adopt in cold blood. The moment chosen is one of the surest means of
distinguishing the work of the legislator from that of the tyrant.

What people, then, is a fit subject for legislation? One which, already
bound by some unity of origin, interest, or convention, has never yet felt
the real yoke of law; one that has neither customs nor superstitions
deeply ingrained, one which stands in no fear of being overwhelmed by
sudden invasion; one which, without entering into its neighbours'
quarrels, can resist each of them single-handed, or get the help of one to
repel another; one in which every member may be known by every other, and
there is no need to lay on any man burdens too heavy for a man to bear;
one which can do without other peoples, and without which all others can
do;15 one which is neither rich nor
poor, but self-sufficient; and, lastly, one which unites the consistency
of an ancient people with the docility of a new one. Legislation is made
difficult less by what it is necessary to build up than by what has to be
destroyed; and what makes success so rare is the impossibility of finding
natural simplicity together with social requirements. All these conditions
are indeed rarely found united, and therefore few States have good
constitutions.

There is still in Europe one country capable of being given laws —
Corsica. The valour and persistency with which that brave people has
regained and defended its liberty well deserves that some wise man should
teach it how to preserve what it has won. I have a feeling that some day
that little island will astonish Europe.

11. THE VARIOUS SYSTEMS OF LEGISLATION

IF we ask in what
precisely consists the greatest good of all, which should be the end of
every system of legislation, we shall find it reduce itself to two main
objects, liberty and equality — liberty, because all particular
dependence means so much force taken from the body of the State and
equality, because liberty cannot exist without it.

I have already defined civil liberty; by equality, we should understand,
not that the degrees of power and riches are to be absolutely identical
for everybody; but that power shall never be great enough for violence,
and shall always be exercised by virtue of rank and law; and that, in
respect of riches, no citizen shall ever be wealthy enough to buy another,
and none poor enough to be forced to sell himself:16
which implies, on the part of the great, moderation in goods and position,
and, on the side of the common sort, moderation in avarice and
covetousness.

Such equality, we are told, is an unpractical ideal that cannot actually
exist. But if its abuse is inevitable, does it follow that we should not
at least make regulations concerning it? It is precisely because the force
of circumstances tends continually to destroy equality that the force of
legislation should always tend to its maintenance.

But these general objects of every good legislative system need
modifying in every country in accordance with the local situation and the
temper of the inhabitants; and these circumstances should determine, in
each case, the particular system of institutions which is best, not
perhaps in itself, but for the State for which it is destined. If, for
instance, the soil is barren and unproductive, or the land too crowded for
its inhabitants, the people should turn to industry and the crafts, and
exchange what they produce for the commodities they lack. If, on the other
hand, a people dwells in rich plains and fertile slopes, or, in a good
land, lacks inhabitants, it should give all its attention to agriculture,
which causes men to multiply, and should drive out the crafts, which would
only result in depopulation, by grouping in a few localities the few
inhabitants there are.17 If a
nation dwells on an extensive and convenient coast-line, let it cover the
sea with ships and foster commerce and navigation. It will have a life
that will be short and glorious. If, on its coasts, the sea washes nothing
but almost inaccessible rocks, let it remain barbarous and ichthyophagous:
it will have a quieter, perhaps a better, and certainly a happier life. In
a word, besides the principles that are common to all, every nation has in
itself something that gives them a particular application, and makes its
legislation peculiarly its own. Thus, among the Jews long ago and more
recently among the Arabs, the chief object was religion, among the
Athenians letters, at Carthage and Tyre commerce, at Rhodes shipping, at
Sparta war, at Rome virtue. The author of The Spirit of the Laws
has shown with many examples by what art the legislator directs the
constitution towards each of these objects. What makes the constitution of
a State really solid and lasting is the due observance of what is proper,
so that the natural relations are always in agreement with the laws on
every point, and law only serves, so to speak, to assure, accompany and
rectify them. But if the legislator mistakes his object and adopts a
principle other than circumstances naturally direct; if his principle
makes for servitude while they make for liberty, or if it makes for
riches, while they make for populousness, or if it makes for peace, while
they make for conquest — the laws will insensibly lose their
influence, the constitution will alter, and the State will have no rest
from trouble till it is either destroyed or changed, and nature has
resumed her invincible sway.

12. THE DIVISION OF THE LAWS

IF the whole is to be
set in order, and the commonwealth put into the best possible shape, there
are various relations to be considered. First, there is the action of the
complete body upon itself, the relation of the whole to the whole, of the
Sovereign to the State; and this relation, as we shall see, is made up of
the relations of the intermediate terms.

The laws which regulate this relation bear the name of political laws,
and are also called fundamental laws, not without reason if they are wise.
For, if there is, in each State, only one good system, the people that is
in possession of it should hold fast to this; but if the established order
is bad, why should laws that prevent men from being good be regarded as
fundamental? Besides, in any case, a people is always in a position to
change its laws, however good; for, if it choose to do itself harm, who
can have a right to stop it?

The second relation is that of the members one to another, or to the
body as a whole; and this relation should be in the first respect as
unimportant, and in the second as important, as possible. Each citizen
would then be perfectly independent of all the rest, and at the same time
very dependent on the city; which is brought about always by the same
means, as the strength of the State can alone secure the liberty of its
members. From this second relation arise civil laws.

We may consider also a third kind of relation between the individual and
the law, a relation of disobedience to its penalty. This gives rise to the
setting up of criminal laws, which, at bottom, are less a particular class
of law than the sanction behind all the rest.

Along with these three kinds of law goes a fourth, most important of
all, which is not graven on tablets of marble or brass, but on the hearts
of the citizens. This forms the real constitution of the State, takes on
every day new powers, when other laws decay or die out, restores them or
takes their place, keeps a people in the ways in which it was meant to go,
and insensibly replaces authority by the force of habit. I am speaking of
morality, of custom, above all of public opinion; a power unknown to
political thinkers, on which none the less success in everything else
depends. With this the great legislator concerns himself in secret, though
he seems to confine himself to particular regulations; for these are only
the arc of the arch, while manners and morals, slower to arise, form in
the end its immovable keystone.

Among the different classes of laws, the political, which determine the
forms of the government, are alone relevant to my subject.

6. To be general, a will need not
always be unanimous; but every vote must be counted: any exclusion is a
breach of generality.

7. "Every interest," says
the Marquis d'Argenson, "has different principles. The agreement of
two particular interests is formed by opposition to a third." He
might have added that the agreement of all interests is formed by
opposition to that of each. If there were no different interests, the
common interest would be barely felt, as it would encounter no obstacle;
all would go on of its own accord, and politics would cease to be an art.

8. "In fact," says
Machiavelli, "there are some divisions that are harmful to a Republic
and some that are advantageous. Those which stir up sects and parties are
harmful; those attended by neither are advantageous. Since, then, the
founder of a Republic cannot help enmities arising, he ought at least to
prevent them from growing into sects" (History of Florence,
Book vii).

9. Attentive readers, do not, I pray,
be in a hurry to charge me with contradicting myself. The terminology made
it unavoidable, considering the poverty of the language; but wait and see.

10. I understand by this word, not
merely an aristocracy or a democracy, but generally any government
directed by the general will, which is the law. To be legitimate, the
government must be, not one with the Sovereign, but its minister. In such
a case even a monarchy is a Republic. This will be made clearer in the
following book.

11. A people becomes famous only when
its legislation begins to decline. We do not know for how many centuries
the system of Lycurgus made the Spartans happy before the rest of Greece
took any notice of it.

13. Those who know Calvin only as a
theologian much under-estimate the extent of his genius. The codification
of our wise edicts, in which he played a large part, does him no less
honour than his Institute. Whatever revolution time may bring in
our religion, so long as the spirit of patriotism and liberty still lives
among us, the memory of this great man will be for ever blessed.

14. "In truth," says
Machiavelli, "there has never been, in any country, an extraordinary
legislator who has not had recourse to God; for otherwise his laws would
not have been accepted: there are, in fact, many useful truths of which a
wise man may have knowledge without their having in themselves such clear
reasons for their being so as to be able to convince others" (Discourses
on Livy, Bk. v, ch. xi).

15. If there were two neighbouring
peoples, one of which could not do without the other, it would be very
hard on the former, and very dangerous for the latter. Every wise nation,
in such a case, would make haste to free the other from dependence. The
Republic of Thiascala, enclosed by the Mexican Empire, preferred doing
without salt to buying from the Mexicans, or even getting it from them as
a gift. The Thiascalans were wise enough to see the snare hidden under
such liberality. They kept their freedom, and that little State, shut up
in that great Empire, was finally the instrument of its ruin.

16. If the object is to give the
State consistency, bring the two extremes as near to each other as
possible; allow neither rich men nor beggars. These two estates, which are
naturally inseparable, are equally fatal to the common good; from the one
come the friends of tyranny, and from the other tyrants. It is always
between them that public liberty is put up to auction; the one buys, and
the other sells.

17. "Any branch of foreign
commerce," says M. d'Argenson, "creates on the whole only
apparent advantage for the kingdom in general; it may enrich some
individuals, or even some towns; but the nation as a whole gains nothing
by it, and the people is no better off."